Gardening time!
Monday 4th March 2013
There was a cold start to the day: so cold that I couldn’t get warm until well into the afternoon. In the morning I took Jez and Max to Upton Heath for their walk. It was pretty uneventful. Sometime after we got back, though, Jez started limping slightly on her back right leg. Given that it’s been operated on 3 times and has a plate holding it together, it’s normally pretty stable. So either something is pressing on a nerve in her spine and causing pain down the leg (which is possible as she has a degenerative spinal disease), or she is experiencing some sort of muscle spasm. For now, we’re just resting her to see if it sorts itself out as it has done in the past.
At lunchtime the sun broke through the clouds and it started to warm up, so I took the opportunity to get out in the garden. I mowed the back lawn and attacked several of the shrubs with the hedge trimmer. Somehow I managed to cut through the electric lead of the trimmer twice, so twice I had to stop and repair it! Even after only an hour and a half’s work the garden is starting to look much better though.
At one point (fortunately when Chris had the dogs out – yes, he did take Jez but bought her back after about 20 minutes) I disturbed this little chap.
It’s a common frog. We get a lot of them in the garden as we have a pond. Or at least we used to get a lot of them, but my dogs are both intrepid frog hunters, so I’m finding less and less of them. This one tried to escape from me by hiding under the door frame to the back of our garage. Sadly, he was too fat to fit in there!
I was worried he’d get stuck, so I eased him out again.
After taking a couple of photos I put him back under the shrubs. (I say ‘he’, by the way, but for all I know it could have been a ‘she’).
Looks like a ‘she’ that has yet to spawn. There are loads down at the top pond at the moment, with masses of spawn already.
hope Jez is walking better soon.
Steve
Thanks for that Steve. Good job I handled her gently then!